The Spaniards were just better than us. Much better than us in fact. It makes a mockery of Sir Alex Ferguson’s comments last month about how good this current squad is.

“I feel we had the ability to go all the way to the final,” he claimed. “Luck wasn’t on our side, but I think we’ve got the ambition to compete with Barcelona and Real Madrid, and I don’t feel we’re that far away from them. I’m sure we’ll show that soon.”

Athletic Bilbao are the 7th best team in Spain, 33 points behind Real Madrid and 23 points behind Barcelona, yet over two legs they were the far superior team. Not necessarily just in terms of ability, as I believe if we’d created half the chances they did in both games we would have scored far more than just five goals, but in terms of their tactics and work ethic too. They defended so high up the pitch, leaving United passing around our back four and to the keeper time and again. When we did get it in to their half they were on us, swarming around the ball, forcing us in to mistakes or simply taking the ball off us.

A few years ago, had we faced such a tough game at Old Trafford, you’d imagine that Carlos Queiroz would have thought up something to give us a chance in the second leg. Think of those two games against Barcelona in the semi-finals in 2008 when we kept Messi, Iniesta, Xavi, Eto’o, Henry and co. at bay, preventing them from scoring a single goal in both matches on our way to the final.

Last night’s defeat to Bilbao was a carbon copy of the first in terms of how they played and how we allowed them to play. We switched the formation and we brought in more experienced players but everything about the way we were dominated was the same. We’re a million miles away from Barcelona and Real Madrid and the manager is kidding himself if he thinks otherwise. Of course, I don’t think Sir Alex truly believes this but he has to say something to justify us not breaking the bank to bring in the world class midfielder we’ve been crying out for.

So, what does this defeat mean? If Ferguson is serious about winning another European Cup before he retires, he better get knocking on Uncle Malc’s door and ask him for some dosh. If he isn’t serious about it, if he is happy with scraping ourselves another title, then the defeat means nothing. We have nothing to distract us from winning the league now and I fancy us to do it.

Like after the finals against Barcelona, we’ll have to turn a blind eye to our flaws and just focus on the positives. Winning a 20th title is positive enough for me. Is it right that “the most valuable sports franchise” isn’t able to compete with the best teams in Europe? Quite frankly no, it’s not, but this is where we find ourselves and it certainly could be a lot worse than top of the table with ten games to go!

Come on reds.

Wayne Rooney has acknowledged that we didn’t give a good enough account of ourselves in the first leg but is confident we can improve tonight.

“We have to be confident,” he told the official site. “They obviously played some great football at Old Trafford and deserved to win. We need to show better than what we did that night because we let ourselves down. We’ll be going out there to do our best to win and get through to the next round because this is a competition we want to win. It’ll be a difficult game but we all have the confidence and belief that we can do it.”

“We know we need to score two goals, but it’s also important for us not to concede,” Hernandez said. “We need to be patient. We know the style of Athletic. They pass the ball around, they have a lot of energy and they press their opponents. We have to work hard – harder than them. We have another opportunity to get through tomorrow and we want to keep fighting. It’s a difficult challenge but we want to keep the faith and we want to work very hard to get the result we need.”

Whilst Bilbao’s second goal appeared to be offside and their third came in bizarre circumstances after the referee arranged a strange freekick, they were clearly the better team.

Sir Alex Ferguson has claimed that if United improve their defending in the second leg they will be able to progress to the next round.

“We were well beaten, I have to say they were the better team,” said Ferguson. “I thought our defending wasn’t very good tonight and that kept us on the back foot all the time. Our attacking play was very good at times and it was an open, entertaining match. But Bilbao were the better side. We can still win the game. No question. We showed we can make chances against them, but obviously we have to defend better. I need to really look and see how we can maybe bring Rio Ferdinand in without disrupting the league programme.”

Liverpool then became so bad they couldn’t even get in to the Europa League anymore, making the chant fairly redundant.

However, our fans had reason to sing it again after United failed to make it out of the Champions League group this season. In the following game we put four past Wolves and after every goal the Stretford End sang the song, taking the piss out of ourselves.

Unsurprisingly, other fans have used our own chant with a stick to beat us with, but the more amusing occasions are when its fans of clubs who have never seen their team play in Europe.

Carrick says he understands that rival fans will take the piss but that doesn’t put the players off wanting to win it.

“The reaction is understandable,” said Carrick. “But we are professionals and we are in this tournament, playing for this great club. It doesn’t take much motivation from the players’ point of view. It is a competition we want to win. We are still desperate to go as far as we would do in the Champions League.”

“I’ve no concerns about it hindering our progress in the league, not at all,” he said. “I’m really looking forward to the rest of this competition. It’s a new challenge for all of us. There’s no point being in a competition if you aren’t going to try and win it and the manager has shown he is going to put out strong teams. It would be great to be the first United team to win this trophy, and that’s our aim.”

- Ajax are currently 6th out of 18 teams in the Eredivisie this season having won just 4 of their 9 games at home.
- Ajax have won just one of their last four games, losing against 14th placed FC Utrecht at home and 4th placed Feyenoord away.
- Miralem Sulejmani is Ajax’s top scorer this season with 12 goals in 26 appearances. Their second highest scorer is Dmitri Bulykin with 7 goals in 16 games.
- In their Champions League group they finished 3rd on goal difference behind Real Madrid and Lyon.
- Ajax have scored most of their goals between the 61st and 75th minutes and conceded most goals between the 76th and 90th minutes.
- 20-year-old Christian Eriksen was named Dutch Football Talent of the Year in 2011 and Danish Football Player of the Year.
- Their average attendance this season is 49,189 (over 3,000 below capacity).

Take a look at MUFCInfo’s preview of the game.

- Johan Cruyff’s old shirt number, 14, was retired by the club in honour of their legend.

- Like Spurs, Ajax are seen to have “Jewish roots” after their stadium was located next to the Jewish neighbourhood in the 1930s. Whilst their fans aren’t predominantly Jewish, they have embraced the connection and chant “Jews! Jews!” (Joden) at games.

- United played against Ajax in the 1st Round of the UEFA Cup in 1976. United lost 1-0 away but in front of 60,000 people at Old Trafford, won 2-0, thanks to goals from Macari and McIlroy. United played a team with an average age of 23-years-old that night, against the Dutch side who went on to be crowned Champions that season.

- “Ajax are a good team and I’ve never faced them in competitive European football,” said Ferguson. “I’m looking forward to it.”

- The first leg will take at the Amsterdam ArenA on Thursday 16 February, KO 6pm (GMT), with the second leg at Old Trafford on Thursday 23 February, KO 8.05pm (GMT).

After the final whistle, the talk of Manchester becoming the new Milan was quickly replaced with jokes about Channel 5 (we will actually be playing on ITV4, meh) and comparison with the teams from London who had progressed though. Whilst there were some blues and reds who could console themselves with the failure of their rivals, it mattered little to me. At some point, I’m sure I’ll find it funny that Sheikh Mansour can’t even buy City success, but all their failure means to me is we’re saved from the unbearable piss taking that would have ensued. Their misery doesn’t soften the blow for our own pain and I am genuinely gutted we failed to get out of the group.

Patrice Evra spoke well on the topic, as he usually does, expressing the feelings of plenty of fans.  “We deserve to be out,” he said. “But it is embarrassing to be in the Europa League.” Embarrassing is right. It’s impossible to avoid sounding like a snob or massively spoilt, but that competition is there for those who aren’t good enough for the Champions League and it’s embarrassing we’re lumped in with those second rate sides. APOEL are good enough for the elite competition, so are Napoli and FC Basel, but we’re with Stoke and the like in the bloody Europa League. It’s sickening.

Roy Keane was critical of the younger players on Wednesday and whilst I agreed with a lot of what he said, my initial reaction was to feel defensive of our youngsters. But our former captain doesn’t have any time for sentimentality and when you break it down, De Gea fucked up for the first goal and one of Evans or Smalling should have dealt with the second. I’m not putting blame on their doorstep and we learn more from our failures than our success, but there’s no tinted specs where Keano is concerned and on the night, some of the younger lads didn’t do their job and it cost us.

Keane said the players were letting the manager down and that’s true. The young ones have time to learn but it is the more experienced players, who should have taken the game by the balls and shown urgency from the first whistle, who need to “take a look in the mirror”, as Evra said. Yes, we dominated the game and yes we created enough chances to win it, but there’s no excuse for us not getting a draw. There’s no excuse for Rooney not burying that cross from Nani in the first half. Excruciating.

Essentially though, it’s the games at home we will be left to regret. The FC Basel game at home was the biggest joke of the lot and that is the game that knocked us out. Danny Welbeck put us 2-0 up with less than 20 minutes played but we found ourselves 3-2 down in injury time before Ashley Young drew us level. Joke.

So now we have the Europa League and the only thing that will take the edge off the pain for me is if we field the team we would have used for the League Cup. I’ve heard reds saying that we should go for it, that it would be great for Fergie to win it, but I can’t get my head around that way of thinking at all. Here comes the football snob in me again but who gives a shit about the Europa League? If it was the final tomorrow night, yes, obviously I’d want us to play our strongest team and win it, but the damage that competition could do to us is not worth the benefit. We’re without Nemanja Vidic for the rest of the season now because of one Champions League game, as if we can afford to risk any more of our players in trying to win the Europa League. If we got to the semis, maybe then take it more seriously, as silverware is silverware, but we should rely on our youngsters and fringe players to get us there, and if they can’t, no big deal.

The overriding feeling for me though, and one that is sadly so repetitive and dull, is we would not be in this position if we had brought in the quality central midfielder we’ve been crying out for. The cost of missing out on Champions League football from this point on is reportedly worth £20m. To make you sick, David Silva cost £24m and Juan Mata cost £26m, two players who have been brilliant in the Premier League, yet we wouldn’t splash the cash on a top midfielder. Could we afford to buy one? The answer is we couldn’t afford not to buy one, and our Champions League exit has gone a long way to proving that.

It isn’t so much the transfer fee that apparently held us back but the obsession with keeping the wage bill down. That’s why the likes of John O’Shea and Wes Brown were sold last summer and why Rio Ferdinand will probably be allowed to leave this summer. The best players want the best wages and whilst I love seeing us bring players like De Gea, Jones, Smalling, Cleverley, Welbeck and the Da Silvas in to the first team, that doesn’t mean I don’t want someone top class in the centre of the park, someone who has dozens of Champions League games under their belt, who has played in finals and World Cups. If we can break the bank for Rooney, who’s hardly set the world alight since forcing the club to pay him a small fortune on a weekly basis, then why aren’t we doing the same for a top player in arguably the most important position?

It’s not all doom and gloom though. We’ve got a good squad and we’ve got the best manager. I still think we’ll win the league, even if Vidic’s injury makes that a lot more difficult, and not having the annual Champions League quarter/semi finals to deal with in the last couple of months of the season will help with that. But that’s beside the point. It shouldn’t be either, or, where United are concerned. Cristiano Ronaldo guided us to that brilliant league and European Cup double in 2008 and the £80m we got for him has not been reinvested in to another superstar, regardless of how highly I rate some of the individuals that have been bought since his exit.

If anything positive can come from this it is the wake up call the Glazers and Ferguson need. We must bring in someone special and we must do it as soon as possible, if this season in Europe is to be an anomaly and not a more common occurrence.

We’ll never die.